


Worth It

by BernRul



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode s03e08: The Worst Possible Use of Free Will, F/M, Human emotions are hard, and Michael can't deal with it, possibly oneside
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-28 22:22:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16731735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BernRul/pseuds/BernRul
Summary: Michael shows Eleanor the wrong reboot. Whoops.





	Worth It

"I complained to you about it once. I think it was reboot 446, here--"

Michael fires up the memory, showing Michael and Eleanor in his old office. Eleanor strides past Michael's desk, towering over him in a startling role reversal. 

"Here, let me fix your bowtie," Eleanor says. 

"Fix what--"

 Before he can finish the thought, Eleanor slides her legs through the loops of his chair as smoothly as puzzle pieces coming together, sitting on his lap.

"There," she says, twisting his bowtie (which was fine, it was clearly and obviously fine this whole time). "You know, I always wondered how much superior beings like you actually feel."

"I can see in nine dimensions, Eleanor," he says, using the same tone that a parent might use when explaining to his toddler why she needed to wear pants. "And I can 'feel' in at least seven."

"You sound so authoritative," she says in a husky voice that could be real, could be fake. "Like Sam the Eagle--"

The image vanishes.

"Whoops," Michael says. "Wrong reeboot! Nothing to see there. The right one must be 445--"

"Hold up," Eleanor says. He's seen that look throughout 800 reboots. It would haunt his dreams, if demons dreamed (they don't). "What was that?"

"Nothing!" Michael says, sounding like a strangled cat. "It's...it's dumb, and it has nothing to do with how demons control everything, so let's move on..."

He falters, like a chump, at the look on her face.

"Really? Nothing? Because it looked like we were on a one way trip to funky town."

"We weren't," Michael says. Why was this restaurant so hot? What was with Earth and it's changing temperatures, anyway? "It's just a whole long dumb thing that doesn't have to do with anything. Weren't you saying that free will's a lie, yada yada yada?" 

"Why was I trying to seduce you?" Eleanor asks.

Michael doesn't know if he should take offense to her incredulous tone. She sounded more accepting when he told her she was sent to hell.

"I don't know, Eleanor, it's just something you did. You were always trying to one up me somehow. It was always really pathetic. One time, you came at me with a machete, and--oh, this is a good one--one time Jason threw salt at me while chanting in gibberish."

"You don't want me to see the rest of it," she says slowly, "which is making me think the worst."

" _Nothing_ happened."

"So prove it." Her smile is pure predator. "If you don't I'm going to dump this delicious iced tea on your head."

Michael paused, partly because he didn't want her to see anything that might taint her image of him, partly to marvel at what a great idea that was. He filed it away in case he ever needed to use it on someone--Chidi, for example.

"Fine," he huffs. He didn't know why he was giving into her so much lately ( _who are you kidding?_   says his inner demon, his pure and sadistic side that Chidi's lessons never fully squashed.  _You always gave into her)._

The scene continued: 

"...Sam the Eagle."

Michael narrows his eyes. To Eleanor's credit, she doesn't flinch away. 

"What are you doing?" he asks. His voice deepened, but wasn't knife sharp yet.

"I told you, I'm curious about what this body can do. I know you're a superior being that my dumb, puny, insignificant human brain can't fathom," she says, her voice drenched in the same sickly seductive tone she reserved for ticket-writing cops and disgruntled landlords, her hands sliding up Michael's chest, to his face, brushing up against his cheekbones, "but you are sure as here rocking the whole 'dad bod' thing."

"What do you want?" Michael growls. His voice sounded hoarse, like he hadn't drank anything in a century (it was actually a decade, not since the reboot where every restaurant served pumpkin themed beverages). 

Eleanor grabs his collar and yanks him closer. There's practically no space between them. Her lips almost, but don't quite, brush up against his. 

"What do you think I want?"

He meets her eyes, searching hers, his own betraying just a hint of longing, so faint it's barely there. 

Eleanor glances down at their joined laps, then back at Michael's face, looking surprised and incredibly smug. 

"Dang, Mikey, I know I'm a striaght up hottie, but I wasn't expecting  _that_ so forking fast."

"I-" he starts, embarrassed, but then just as quickly, his eyes darken dangerously. "You figured it out."

She tries to play dumb. "Figured what out?"

It might have worked, if this wasn't their 446 go around.

"Aw, shirt," he mutters, and snaps his fingers.

Eleanor takes the ear buds out. The restaurant is jam packed, but suddenly Michael can't hear anything.

"I knew it," she says, slow and deliberate. Michael's about to protest, but her tone turns triumphant. "I  _knew_ you had a penis!"

"I'm leaving," he says, standing up so suddenly that he almost knocks down their poor waitress. 

"Oh, come on," Eleanor says. She sounds much lighter than she did after the Chidi memories. "Seriously, wait.  _You_ might not need to eat, but I haven't had anything all day and I'm starving, dude. Let me at least order something to go, okay? I'll meet you in the car."

"Okay," he says stiffly, and practically runs out of there. He sits in the driver's seat (pushed as far back it can go), surrounded by artifical light and happy, laughing patrons returning to their cars. 

He didn't know why he freaked out over Eleanor seeing the memory. It wasn't like that time he set a monster clown loose in her house; it wasn't like they  _did_ anything. Still, it unnerved him, just as Eleanor always unnerved him, burrowing into his brain like an ear spider, nestling in so long that he forgets it's there, until the eggs hatch and they all come bursting out again. 

Human feelings were so frustrating. He was eons old, he should understand them. Yet even after Chidi's class and his own observations on Earth, they still eluded his grasp. Usually whenever he had a human problem, he went straight to his favorite human; of course, that didn't help when the problem  _was_ Eleanor.

He couldn't say why Eleanor appealed to him the way she did. He felt it in the very first version, when she was his assistant. Back then, he got a kick out of making seemingly polite comments that set off the alarm bells in her head. By that point he'd already played with Tahani's inferiority complex, held one-sided conversations with Jianyu the wise monk, and tortured Chidi with decision making, so he was really looking forward to taking a shot at Eleanor.

He wasn't expecting it to be so much  _fun._

He thought he knew fun. Fun was brushing a human's teeth with a hot glue gun, or laughing at their expressions when their insides turned into their outsides, but Eleanor taught him human fun. Fun that wasn't tied to work. That entire afternoon, he didn't think about torturing Eleanor once; all she had to do was show him how to make a paperclip bracelet and he was willing to do whatever she suggested. It took him 649 reboots to fully admit to himself that he just loved spending time with her. 

The passanger side door opens. Eleanor slides in, carrying a styrofoam container and licking sauce off of her fingers. 

"Alright, let's get those dweebs so he can leave this miserable porn-loving state."

For a while, there was nothing but the sound of Eleanor fiddling with the radio and munching on her soggy burger. Humans were always gnawing on something...it use to revolt him, along with everything else about their stupid revolting bodies. When had that changed? Some time after meeting his four humans, but not right away. He remembers being so disgusted after the first time he caught Eleanor and Chidi kissing that he nearly ripped his human suit to shreds. 

Eleanor broke the silence. "Hey, bud? Can we talk about earlier, or is it going to make you freak out and screw up driving?"

"I'm not going to  _screw up_ driving," Michael scoffs. "Humans do it all the time, and demons are thirteen times more capable than humans."

"Oh yeah? Do a lot of driving in hell?"

"There's the perpetual traffic jam department. You should see it, it's hilarious how mad everyone gets."

"I bet," Eleanor says, her lips twitching like she wanted to laugh but knew she shouldn't. 

Michael turns the radio dial, hoping to distract her.

"Why would they devote an entire station to jazz? Hey, did I tell you that in one reboot I wrote a three hour jazz seranade for you--"

"Let me guess," she cuts across him, "I immediately figured out it was the Bad Place."

"I was so mad. All that rehearsing for nothing."

She shook her head, smiling. "You should've known that was way too obvious. But seriously, can you stop stalling and let me talk?"

"I'm not stalling. Go ahead and ask whatever stupid thing you want to ask."

"Real mature, Mikey. And they say I suck at adulting." Her voice switched to a lower, more serious tone. "Michael, what were we to each other? Like, what was our relationship like? Because that last memory, and the way you look at me now, isn't father-daughter. I mean, if that's how fathers look at their daughters than their ass is headed straight for jail."

Michael doesn't have blood, so he doesn't understand why his face heats up and turns pink enough for Eleanor to notice.

"It's--you--"

He's not being stupid on purpose, it's just that he's never put it into words before. In 300 Jeremy Bearimy years, he's never allowed himself to thnk about it long enough, because the few times he tried made him understand how Jason Mendoza must feel all the time. 

"We're friends," is what he settles on. "You, the other humans, and Janet are the only friends I've ever had."

"Okay," Eleanor says. She stares out of the window. Her face shows nothing, but the word hangs between them, blarring over the radio static.

Sometimes Michael forgets that his human suit is a human suit. He's worn it so long, but he's always noticed it before: the stubby feelers, the dumb ears that jutted out pointlessly, the hanging bits. He was always hyper aware of it, both fascinated and disgusted by it. After he started the neighborhood experiment, it stopped bothering him, and by the time he joined Team Cockroach, he started forgetting he was wearing a suit at all. He spends so much time with the humans (and Janet, but Janet's becoming more human herself) that he likes to think he's one of them. Maybe not exactly the same--maybe more like a wise father figure, guiding them--but still apart of the group. 

Now he's reminded that he's not human, not even an honorary one. Eleanor reminds him that humanity is confusing and frustrating and needlessly complicated. It's always been Eleanor who knocks him off balance. But then, it's always Eleanor who picks him back up again.

"Hey," Michael says. "Do you remember what you told me earlier, about not being worth changing for?"

"Y-yes," Eleanor says, startled away from the window. He reads the question in her eyes.

"Well, you were. You are. Worth changing for." Michael doesn't need to breathe, obviously, but he takes a deep breath anyway. "I changed for you. Chidi's lessons didn't turn me good--it was you, being by my side, helping to see me through (and sometimes letting me cheat off of you). Being with you made me want to change. And when it got to be so overwhelming that I wondered if it would be easier just to retire, it was you I went to. Sure, I love the others too, but it's _different_ with you. And that's the only way I can explain it."

He sneaks a peak at her. Her face is frozen, like a crashing computer. 

"Thank you," she whispers. He's afraid she's going to cry, but her eyes stay stubbornly dry. "Thank you, Michael."

He smiles because he doesn't know what to say. They drive in silence for a moment, before Eleanor switches the station again, complaining about the ungodly noise masquerading as country music.

Michael feels home again. 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave a comment to let me know what you think.


End file.
